


Fair Children, Chase the Truth

by That_Ghost_Kristoff



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Adopted Alec Fray, Alec Lightwood-centric, Alec and Clary are Cinnamon Rolls, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Clary Fray & Alec Lightwood Friendship, Clary Fray-centric, F/M, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 06:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7031920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/That_Ghost_Kristoff/pseuds/That_Ghost_Kristoff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alec and Clary grow up inseparable, despite their two year and eleventh month age gap. Finding out he's adopted and she's the child of a real life supervillian isn't going to change that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Alec and Clary spend the afternoon before she turns eighteen in Manhattan, reclining back against a tree in Central Park and sharing a pomegranate, digging seeds out with their nails. “I’m so nervous,” she says as she scoops out a small handful from her half cupped in her palm, her fingers stained as red as his. They’re sitting on raised roots midway down a grassy slope, overlooking the asphalt path were pedestrians and cyclists meander towards 72nd Street. “What if they hate everything?”

Tomorrow morning she’s going to the Pratt Institute’s Fine Arts faculty to show her portfolio, and if they like it, she starts in spring. She wanted to go this semester, since she graduated high school in June, but it’s not like art programs offer a lot of scholarships, so she’s working at the coffee shop like her brother first to earn enough to at least pay for supplies. Next week he goes back to working part time because NYU starts up again for his final year, so all she’s doing is replacing him. Her soon-to-be coworkers call her Little Fray already.

“You’re amazing,” Alec says, swallowing his seeds. He has almost none in his half, though she has more than half still in hers. “They won’t. But, really. I still think you should show them your graphic art.”

“And I’m still saying they’ll think that’s kid stuff,” she says like a logical person. The comic art she draws in collaboration with Simon is more fun than landscapes, but it’s not the type of drawings professionals appreciate. 

Shrugging, Alec says, “If you say so. They definitely look like they were drawn with more enthusiasm than the one of the cove Luke brought us to.”

Every summer, Luke and Mom take off of work on the same week, and they leave the city to go somewhere with hiking trails and trees like it’s a family vacation. Clary doesn’t understand how they aren’t at least  _ dating  _ yet. “Whatever,” she says. “Do you think they’ll still like it?”

She’s sure she’s getting annoying with how many times she’s asked this question, but Alec hasn’t snapped at her to stop yet. Instead, he just says, “They’re idiots if they don’t,” like the awesome older brother he is, and steals more seeds from her half before she can stop him.

“I wish you were able to get off of work,” she says, resigned to his thievery. “I don’t want to go alone.”

“I thought Simon was going with you.”

“He couldn’t get off until eleven.”

Though it sucks, she gets it; it’s the last week of August, and everyone’s on vacation. There’s no one to cover for them. With a frown, Alec says, “Come to the shop when you’re done. That’ll be after eleven, right? You can convince my manager to let me off a couple hours early.”

Thankfully Rick, the manager, is also leaving for school next week, because Clary doesn’t want to work under a guy who keeps hitting on her, even if it might have its advantages. “Won’t be that hard,” she says. “But I’m pre-ordering a caramel latte with extra syrup and an orange biscotti, got it?”

“You’re so boring,” Alec says. “You always order the same thing.”

“It’s a coffee shop, Alec.  _ Everyone  _ always orders the same thing.”

Alec laughs, and throws the finished half of the pomegranate towards the trashcan, where it makes it in between a food truck bag of half-eaten falafel and a Pepsi can that should be in the recycling. After years of being the star of first the high school’s archery team and then NYU’s, his aim’s always perfect. “You’ll be fine, Clary,” he says, and wraps his arm around her in reassurance that her art career won’t end before it even begins. “I promise.”

He’s not on the panel, so he can’t promise anything, but he’s her older brother, so a part of her believes him automatically. Sighing, she leans against him, and prays to no one that he’s right.

  
  


August twenty-second is the Fray siblings’ last good day, because Clary’s birthday ends with Alec on the floor of their ransacked apartment, his leg torn open on glass, and his sister unconscious in his arms. “I don’t know what the fuck that was,” he says to the boy standing over them with his glowing sword still held out like he’s about to strike, “or what the fuck you are, but if you can kill that, you can help her.”

When Clary breathes, it comes out like a stutter, her entire body shuddering from the effort. The guy kneels down, mindful of the glass, and holds out the hilt of the sword. “I might be able to help both of you,” he says, almost like he’s being careful, and Alec accepts the weapon without a second thought if it means the guy will have his hands free to carry Clary.

It lights up, bright white, and for now, Alec tries to ignore how  _ natural  _ it feels. 

“I leave you alone for  _ five minutes _ ,” another voice says suddenly, a girl’s, and moment later she steps through the doorway. He recognizes her from the club, though her black hair’s pulled back away from her face now in some elaborate hairstyle Clary would never have the patience to do. “What did you do, Jace? Wait, is that glowing?”

Alec drops it, abruptly guilty, so the sword clatters to the ground and the blade retracts. The other guy—Jace, apparently—ignores it as he picks up Clary and says, “I’ll explain on the way. She’s light. Take her, and I’ll support him. We need to get them to the Institute.”

As the girl steps forward, heels clicking against the floor, her eyes wander again to the discarded sword. “We’ll have to get them through the back door,” she says, taking Clary from Jace as though she weighs nothing as Alec forces himself up. “Hey, you. Be careful. That looks deep.”

He stumbles, dizzy, but the guy catches him, wrapping his arm around his shoulders to support him. Alec takes a deep breath, trying to stay calm as Jace kicks up the hilt like a hacky sack and catches it. In front of them, the other girl leads the way, walking faster than they can even with Clary in her arms. 

“Where are you taking us?” Alec asks, trying to remain upright. He keeps his eyes on his sister’s hair, so long that it’s nearly brushing the ground. When she was younger, she was always Ariel for Halloween. “Is she going to be okay?”

On cue, she lets out a quiet gasp of pain, and he stumbles, vision dimming. Jace tightens his grip around Alec’s waist. “You’re going to be fine,” he says. “Just hang in there.”

Suddenly, Alec’s vision goes out completely, and he’s aware for one last, disorienting moment that the guy holding him swears in a tirade. His final thought is about Mom, who’s gone, and whether or not he’ll ever see her again. 

  
  


When Alec wakes, his leg’s healed and the girl who saved his sister is saying, “Jace, she might need more than a rune.”

There’s a vaulted ceiling above him carved from stone like an old cathedral, and the windows are made of stained glass that don’t depict any real images. Alec sees this first when he opens his eyes, until he sits, and finds the two strangers with their backs to him, but Clary’s in full view, lying unconscious on a bed like a hospital cot. The girl’s leaning over Clary, dabbing at her forehead with a damp cloth, as the guy stands at the edge of the bed.

Standing’s a struggle, but Alec manages, his leg protesting with a shock of pain. “Hey,” he says, voice low and hoarse but getting their attention, “what’re you doing?”

“Saving the two of you,” the guy says as the girl steps away from the bed and closer to him. Neither of them try to stop Alec when he makes it to his sister’s side, and sits. “You know, like you asked.”

Clary’s hand is hot, and her hair sticks to her forehead from the sweat of a fever. On her neck’s a large mark like a scar that’s never been there before. Turning to the others, Alec says, “What the hell? Who gave you permission to tattoo my sister?”

“You have one too,” the girl says, taking a seat opposite it to resume her movement with the cloth. “We had to put them there to save your lives. You were about to bleed out, and she’s so full of poison that it wasn’t even enough.”

Though Alec doesn’t want to believe any of that night was real, he can’t deny what he saw, or what he’s currently seeing, or that Mom and Dot are gone. Luke may or may not have been lying about using them, and Clary may or may not still be dying from the sound of it. 

No. She’s  _ not  _ going to die. Not when she just turned eighteen and got accepted into the art program of her dreams. Life’s not that unfair.

A hand lightly touches his shoulder, startling him, and when he moves his attention away from his sister’s face, he finds the other girl looking at him, smiling sympathetically. “I’m Isabelle,” she says, gesturing to herself before pointing behind her. “This is my brother Jace. We’re shadowhunters. So are you, or the runes never would’ve worked.”

“And the seraph blade lit right up,” Jace says, leaning forward so his elbows rest on the bed’s end board. Even through the insanity of the situation, Alec vaguely registers that he’s hot. “That wouldn’t have happened for a mundane or a downworlder. Mundanes are humans,” he adds. “Downworlders are demons or half-demons. You know, vampires, werewolves, seelies. People like that.”

Alec’s dizzy again for any entirely different reason than injury. “Yeah, okay,” he says. “Whatever you say, Malfoy. Where’s my mom? Where’s Dot? When will Clary be awake?”

Shrugging, Isabelle says, “Maybe another day. Healing a wound infected with demon poison takes time. For your mother and her friend—well, we have an idea, but we aren’t sure.”

“I’m fine with just an idea.”

At this point, any answer works. They can tell him anything short of a unicorn on Mars took his mom and he’ll be willing to accept it. What they do tell him, though, is barely more sensible than that, because Valentine’s a Hallmark holiday, not a real life Voldemort, and the only angels he can think of are the Christian ones, who would probably not be so okay with Alec’s sexuality. 

After they finish, the room’s quiet for a long moment except for Clary’s uneven, pained breathing. Finally, he looks away from them and back to her, who managed to curl up into herself at some point during the explanation. Despite how messed up it is, he finds himself believing them. Now he just needs her to wake up and tell him he’s not going crazy from senioritis setting in a week too early. 

“Am I allowed to leave?” he asks without looking away. Her hand’s clammy in his, and the whole situation reminds him of that time when they were kids and she came down with such an intense fever she lost a week’s worth of her memory. “Our apartment was destroyed. I should get both of us something to wear.”

He’s almost too afraid to ask who dressed her, content to hope it was Isabelle even though the shirt is clearly a guy’s of Jace’s size. When Isabelle says Clary can just borrow some of her clothes, Alec takes one look at her black, leather mini-skirt and pink crop top, and thinks that his sister would wear just about anything else. “Thanks,” he says, “but this is going to be hard enough for her to swallow without a pair of jeans and t-shirt. And I need a change of pants.”

Though Jace is tall, he’s not  _ as  _ tall as Alec, because few people are. That, at least, seems to get through to the two, because they agree. “I’ll come with you,” Isabelle says, standing and smoothing out her skirt. “Right now I don’t really think it’s safe to go alone. Jace, if she wakes up, take it slow.”

Since they definitely didn’t take it slow with Alec, he assumes that means the poison does something to the brain. Shopping with a stranger sounds unpleasant, since shopping in general is already boring, but he follows Isabelle out the door, just barely remembering to grab the stele Mom gave him off the end table. He may not know what it is yet—or what any of this is—but he knows it’s important, and right now, that’s enough for him.

  
  


At eight, Clary fell off the monkeybars at the park down the block, and the resulting infection the cut got gave her the worst fever of her life. It never occurred to either her or her brother that the incident could be anything other than exactly what Mom and Luke said it was. 

“So,” she says in the few minutes she has alone outside the Silent Brother’s judgment house with her brother and Simon, who found them by the power of anxiety and technology. “Mom lied to us for our entire lives and stole my memories of something.”

Maybe it’s naive, but she grew up believing Mom was never the type to lie, because she always taught Alec and Clary to be honest to others and to themselves. He came out at fifteen, about as unafraid as someone could be in that situation, and she felt safe telling Mom a couple years back that she had sex so she could make an appointment with a gynecologist. Everyone has secrets, but not like this. Moms don’t hide from their sons and daughters that they aren’t even human.

Somehow, the fact that Mom lied is harder to understand than anything else.

Alec sighs, slumping back against Simon’s van, which Clary painted just two days ago with the new band name. “She must’ve done something to me that I don’t remember either,” he says, running his fingers through his already messy hair. The streetlight shines over the three of them, dull yellow and blinking irregularly, and darkens his eyes. “There’s no other reason I didn’t start seeing all this until  _ you  _ turned eighteen.”

Considering that he’s not exactly unobservant, he’s probably right. But regardless of what Mom did, they need to save her, and maybe Dot, if Dot’s still alive. Jace didn’t sound too hopeful about that, though Izzy tried to say the possibility is there. 

“It probably had a time limit,” Simon says—Simon, who shouldn’t know about any of this, and looks out of place with his thirty dollar glasses and GAP tshirt. “It would make sense. You’re ninth birthday party was cancelled because you were in the hospital, remember?”

She doesn’t remember any of this, but then again, she did lose a week. But Alec says, “Yeah, true. But I remember that week. Whatever Mom did to me, it wasn’t wiping my memory of anything.”

As Clary goes to say that it must’ve happened at the park, Izzy calls them over to the other side of abandoned lot. “Only two people should enter,” she says when they near, “and Jace has volunteered to go, so the three of us are keeping watch. Pick a weapon, Alec. Your mom must’ve had you trained in  _ something. _ ”

During the time that Clary and the boys were conversing, Jace had rolled out a tarp of weapons. The way Izzy says it is half-joking, half-serious, but Alec picks up the quiver and bow without a moment’s hesitation. “Yeah,” he says bluntly. “I guess she did.”

Mom’s the one who suggested he take up archery in his freshman year. Within a month, he was the best on Varsity. Though Clary never took up a sport past middle school, she ran every morning, and stayed fit because that’s what her mother did, and she learned from example. 

This just keeps getting worse. 

“Let’s go,” Jace says, holding out his hand for her, as Izzy’s small, teasing smile fades. “The sooner we get this over with, the less painful it’ll be for you.”

That doesn’t sound like a way Clary wants to spend her evening, but she accepts Jace’s hand anyway, and throws a look over her shoulder to her brother, standing there next to confident, cheerful Izzy with a look on his face like a damaged puppy and his shoulders rolled in to make himself small. “I’ll be right here,” he says with a tired smile as Simon wishes her luck. Jace’s hand is warm around hers, and she feels Alec’s eyes on her back until she’s through the entrance, and the door shuts behind her.

  
  


In the aftermath of Simon’s disappearance and the Silent Brother’s gifted information, Clary doesn’t want to speak with anyone. Alec doesn’t look at her, which she understands, and she watches as Jace tries to talk to him, stumbling over a conversation about common ground. 

She can’t be alone entirely, though. Simon still needs saving, and Izzy’s too considerate. “I get it,” she says, watching the boys as well, her quick eyes following her brother’s movements as he paces and gestures to Alec, who sits on a cement block. They’re still in the abandoned lot under the flickering streetlamps, far enough from the City that the traffic is muffled but close enough that its lights bleach other any stars. “Our mother and father didn’t tell us Jace was adopted until we were twelve. We already had a parabatai bond by then and everything.”

Regardless of what she thinks, she doesn’t understand, because Mom said  _ nothing.  _ She gave Clary and Alec a life that had its issues but that they loved, and then tore it away. It feels dirty, believing that any part of this is Mom’s fault, but Clary can’t help but think it anyway. This was her truth, as she knew it: her father died when Alec was too young to remember while Mom was still pregnant, but that was all right because Mom was enough, and when she wasn’t, Clary had her brother to chase away the monsters in her closet. Now she knows all of that a lie. 

The Silent Brothers didn’t tell her why Mom took in Alec, or who his parents were. In a way, she supposes she should be thankful, since it means only she’s Valentine’s kid. Her brother—who  _ is  _ her brother, despite what anyone says, because he’s the one who rode her home on his handlebars at eight when she fell down and scraped her leg, and he’s the one who covered for her every time she almost got herself into trouble, and she helped show him it was safe to be himself—doesn’t deserve that title on top of everything else. Somehow, the reality of what that means has set in already, and she feels the status of “Valentine’s daughter” marking her up more clearly than rune.

And to top it off, Simon’s missing. 

For now, she can put aside her own teenage angst. She shuts her eyes, breathes in deep the smell of abandoned construction and urban pollution, and opens them again as she exhales. “You guys have to know where the vampires live,” she says, addressing Izzy but still watching her brother, who’s made himself smaller than ever. “We’ve got to save Simon.”

Though she isn’t speaking loudly, it’s loud enough to draw Jace and Alec’s attention. Her brother’s eyes catch the firelight, glowing, and Jace walks around the cement block he’s sitting on to approach Clary and Izzy. “Yeah,” he says, and pushes his hair out of his face. Dully, Clary thinks his cut is terrible, and his sister really should’ve said something. “We do. The only problem is that an attack on the Hotel Dumort would be breaking the Accords. There’s an agreement between us and the downworlders that keep us from going to war.”

“They took Simon,” Alec says, coming up from behind Jace, but he still doesn’t look at Clary. His hair’s messy and his eyes tired, as though he spent the past two nights sleepless, writing an essay for a class on British lit. “A human—mundane. Doesn’t that mean they attacked first?”

“Technically,” Izzy says, casually indifferently. Neither she nor Jace seem that upset about breaking the rules. “Mundanes are off limits for everyone. But we have to be careful. At least we’ve already got weapons.”

Alec has his quiver and bow slung across his back, already comfortable; Clary can’t  judge him for it, since she feels as though the seraph blade in her hand has been hers forever. “Lead the way,” she says to Izzy and Jace, who thinks she can consider her new friends. “We’re not losing anyone else.”

With a quick look to Simon’s van, Jace says, “I’ll direct you. Can either of you drive that thing?”

Driving in general has never been one of Clary’s strong points, but Alec’s fine, and the vampires who stole their friend were considerate enough to leave the key in the ignition. Jace takes shotgun, because he’s apparently best with directions, and Clary climbs into the back, squeezing between Izzy and a jumble of art supplies, a guitar, and now a big bag of weapons. 

“Take a left out of here,” Jace says, and Alec snaps that he knows how to get to that center of Brooklyn, at the very least, sounding very much like Mom when they rent a zipcar to go down to the Jersey Shore.

Clary shuts her eyes, rests her head against the guitar case, and pretends that Alec is still Mom’s son. 

  
  


Izzy and Jace move together with a synchronicity formed from eighteen years of training together, knowing exactly where the other will be and adapting their strategy accordingly. The degree of their trust in one another and their parabatai bond is the reason why they skyrocketed into being considered two of the best warriors in the Institute at such a young age, so even for the short time they’re separated in Hotel Dumort, she isn’t worried. “My brother will take care of her,” she tries to tell her new friend as they act as distractions, but quickly realizes he’s too anxious to pay attention to anything she has to say. Then she’s just worried that she’s going to have to keep this guy, who she genuinely liked the minute he began talking, from getting himself killed.

But then they meet up with their siblings again, who found the mundane boy, in a hallway of wood flooring and grey walls, and Izzy finds that despite their lack of official training, Clary and Alec have almost the same level of togetherness as she and Jace.

The two of them both stop, uncertain, when a vampire not much bigger than Clary gets his arms around her, holding her to him in defense of Alec’s arrow. His back’s tight as his bow string, but Izzy’s to the side of them, and she gets full view—he, completely calm, as his sister gives the barest hint of a nod—before he adjusts his aim, and strikes open the wall. It breaks with a crash, pouring in sunlight, and the vampire bursts to dust. As he lowers his bow, she stumbles sideways on rubble, and Jace catches her. 

“Fast learner,” Izzy says, impressed. Jace motions for them to follow, hand wrapped around Clary’s and tugging her along. Simon follows close at her heels with the blood stain on his shirt calling the remaining vampires to them like a beacon. “Like,  _ Lightwood  _ fast.”

“I didn’t know a family had a speed limit.” Alec knocks another arrow, eyes still following his sister, whose elongated her seraph blade in her free hand, or maybe Jace.

With a smile, Izzy says, “We don’t. We  _ break  _ the speed limit.”

In the dim lighting of the Hotel Dumort, Alec Fray’s skin looks darker, and the shadows change the shape of his face. For a moment, she thinks he  _ could  _ be a Lightwood, but then they’re in a brighter hallway, and the illusion fades. 

  
  


After setting up Simon in a bed to sleep off the disaster, Alec calls Elaine. “I’ll get him home in the morning,” he says as he joins the others. They’re all covered in scrapes and bruises, still dressed in bloody, plaster dusted clothes, but he doesn’t care enough to change first before accepting pasta served in better dishware than anything Mom owned. The entire kitchen is dark wood, iron, and steel, like an IKEA catalogue display. “Sorry that I’m calling so late. The night’s been a disaster.”

Clary’s half asleep, head propped in her hand as she spins her fork around her spaghetti. It’s nice to know even demon slaying twenty-somethings eat plain Italian food, even if both the noodles and tomato sauce taste homemade. Next to her, Jace jiggles his knee, still wired, and beside him, Izzy cuts her pasta with the side of her fork before eating it lazily. Alec finished half his bowl before he thought of calling.

On the other side, Elaine sighs. “ _I keep telling him to be more careful with that phone_ ,” she says. Considering the kid’s broken two of his other phones, saying he dropped it in the running sink while helping Alec move into his dorm seemed like the safest excuse. “ _And will the two of you_ please _remember to pay for your minutes before three in the morning next time? It’s hard trying to find my son when I can’t_ _reach any of you._ ”

The Frays have had prepaid phones for as long as phones have been popular. As a kid, Alec always thought that Mom just didn’t have enough money for a contract. Now he thinks that maybe this makes them less traceable. “I’ll get him back tomorrow when he wakes up,” he says. Clary blinks slowly, and looks up at him, her eyes bright with exhaustion. They really don’t resemble each other at all. “Sorry about all of this.”

Elaine says goodbye, but not before commenting that it’s her son who should apologize, not Alec or Clary. When he hangs up, Jace says, “You’re going to have to break his phone.”

When the vampires left the keys in the van’s ignition, they also left Simon’s phone. Clary fumbles for a moment, but gets it out of her pocket and out of its case. “Might as well make it true,” she says, standing, and adds, “He’s so going to kill me.”

“It’s better than his mother finding out,” Izzy says, pushing her empty bowl away. Alec’s is still half full, but he can’t imagine finishing it. Jace’s is empty, too, and Clary hasn’t touched hers.

The phone hits the bottom of the sink with a clatter. “Thanks for calling,” she says, turning it on. After running the water for about a minute, its light blinks out and won’t turn back. Even though Alec made the call, and Izzy’s right in saying it’s the better option, he still feels like a dick for breaking his friend’s phone. All of his music is on there and half-decent lyrics for original songs he hasn’t finished yet. 

Suddenly, Alec realizes the lie he told Simon’s mother will never be anything other than that, because it’s already Saturday, he’s supposed to be in the dorm’s by Friday, and he doubts they’re finding Mom in a week. 

“I want a shower,” he says, because it’s better than breaking down at the thought of never fulfilling his life’s dream of becoming an English professor. “Is there somewhere Clary can sleep?”

Since he woke up a day before her, he already has a room. As she turns around, Izzy and Jace exchange a look and he says, “We have to ask first, and everyone’s asleep. She can crash with you or Izzy for tonight.”

Izzy’s up in a moment, threading her elbow through Clary’s. “You can stay with me,” she says. “I have way better shampoo than what your brother’s borrowing. Besides, I’ve never had a sleepover before.”

Even Alec’s had sleepovers, and he’s not exactly social. Living in the Institute, surrounded constantly by people with a room like a glorified hotel suite, must really have sucked. 

“Sure,” Clary says with a small smile. “Just don’t expect me to be able to pull an all-nighter.”

They exit together, arm and arm, leaving Alec alone with Jace, whose eyes follow her back. My sister’s off limits, Alec wants to say, but doesn’t know if it’s because he wants to protect her, or if he wants Jace for himself. 

Instead of voicing his concern, Alec keeps quiet, and watches Jace watch her.

  
  


Clary might have lost her memories, but Alec didn’t, and when he sees Magnus Bane in the crowded, dark, blacklight-lit club half a week later, he feels a bolt of recognition.

It’s vague, but Alec knows he dreamed at him once. The man with the cats’ eyes came to him in his sleep, and pushed a light through his head. Now he stands here, real and covered in glitter like some sort of stereotype. “Oh, you remember me,” he says over the pulsating dance music after Jace gives over the necklace, sounding fucking  _ delighted _ , as though this is something Alec should be happy about. As though he hadn’t just told them a woman who helped raise them is dead. “I thought you were awake. You two certainly grew up pretty.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Jace step closer to Clary, angling himself in front of her, but she just moves closer to Alec. The blacklight makes her hair glow neon. “What do you mean?” she says. “What did you do to him? To us? Give me back my memories.”

“I blocked your ability to see anything from this world for nine years,” he says, lowering the necklace. Izzy’s eyes snap to his face, now watching him instead of it. “Both of you. Sorry about that.”

Alec balls his hands into fists so his nails prick his palms. “Thanks,” he says. “You were so helpful. We’ve given you what you want. It’s your turn.”

“As much as I’d love,” Magnus says, swirling his free hand so purple sparks between his fingers, “to show you mine now that you’ve shown me yours, I’m afraid I can’t. I fed Clary’s memories to a memory demon ages ago. You know, precaution,” he adds as the four of them call out in protest, “in case Valentine ever captured and tortured me, which he’ll want to do with the two you. Come with me. You’ll be safe. I won’t offer twice.”

Together, Alec and Clary draw away, mutually disliking the idea of going with the man who fucked with their heads. Jace and Izzy step in front of them like a wall. “We’ve got them covered,” Izzy says, so Magnus shrugs, and grows a purple portal in the air. 

Before he can enter, someone—not a demon, but something else—tries to rush fast, but Clary seems to move instinctively, sticking out her arm with her sword draw. It hits the man on the side so he stumbles, giving Jace enough time to stab him on the back. 

Unlike the demons they fight, or the vampires, he doesn’t fade. He lies on the ground, bleeding and dead, with his head twisted to the side to reveal a reddened circle tattoo. Though Alec feels sick at the sight of an actual dead body, he forces the nausea down, and watches as Jace points to the corpse. “They already found you,” he says. “Don’t you get it, Magnus? Nowhere’s safe.”

Magnus doesn’t look to Jace but to Alec when he says, “I’m sorry,” and steps backwards through the portal. In a moment, he’s gone, and so is the one lead to find their mother. 

  
  


But Magnus isn’t gone for long. Just a day later, Alec, his sister, and the Lightwoods save the few warlocks in the sanctuary who haven’t already been killed, and get a summoning out of it. 

“Your sister is a brilliant artist,” Magnus says as Clary draws the circle in chalk on mahogany floor, colorful dust covering up to her elbows. It’s like a parody of when they were younger and she’d draw all the hopscotch boards for the neighborhood kids on Saturday mornings under Dot’s attentive supervision. Now Dot’s dead, and those Saturday morning memories might as well belong to someone else. “So like your mother.”

“My mom didn’t draw,” Alec says, leaning against the doorway with his arms crossed. Inside the room, Jace keeps guard, sword at the ready, and behind them, Izzy draws shadowhunter runes to help strength Magnus’. The apartment’s large, decorated half old fashion and half modern, and there’s something about it that leaves Alec feeling as though he needs to watch for something lurking just outside his peripheral vision. He says, “She was like me. She couldn’t even make a stick figure.”

Magnus laughs, light and clear. “Oh, she used to,” he says, “before she went on the run. What are your thoughts on cocktails, Alexander? We should go out.”

“You knew me as a kid,” Alec says, glancing down briefly before turning his attention back to his sister. She rocks back on her heels and wipes her hand across her forehead, smearing it with a mix of pink and yellow pastel. “Should you really be hitting on me?”

When Clary stands, Jace joins her in a moment, hovering as though ready to catch her if she falls. They say something too quiet to hear before Clary turns around and claims she’s done. “I guess get Izzy,” she says, and waits for further instruction.

After Izzy enters, Magnus orders them to different points on the star, and places himself next to Alec, who stands next to Clary. “Whatever you do,” he says, reaching out his hand, “don’t let go.”

A feeling like lightning zings through him the moment he and Magnus touch hands, lighting every nerve. The man smirks, holding eye contact, but he turns away, and grasps Clary’s hand, passing the shock on. It leaves him tingling even after its left, palms prinking where they connect with Magnus and his sister. After she passes it to Jace, he passes it to Izzy, who laughs as she passes it back to Magnus. Like that, the circle’s complete.

“You have to give up a memory of someone you love the most,” he says, and begins his chant. In the split second before the smoke rises, Alec sees Izzy’s eyes widen and her mouth tighten. 

It hits Alec first, again, so he feels the memory slip away of Clary, age fifteen, sprinting down the street with him just a step behind her and the police nearly a block away, chasing the coattails of their laughter for graffiting the school walls. Her hair was flying behind her, catching the light of the streetlights unevenly. He loses the image of that last, and tries not to be remotely satisfied when the face that appears in the smoke for her is his own.

For Jace, it’s Izzy, and then for Izzy, it’s a man with long, slicked-back brown hair. “It’s wrong,” she says, voice edged sharp and high with panic, as though loving this guy is the worst crime she possible could have committed. 

Then Jace shouts her name, but it’s too late, and their circle’s undone. Alec feels a phantom force push him backwards so he slams into the doorframe, head hitting the decorative moulding so his ears ring. After his vision rightens itself, he sees Magnus still standing, arms held out and trying to contain the rushing smoke on his own. His eyes flash yellow. His fingers spark. When he calls out that he can’t do it alone, Alec thinks that’s not much of a surprise, but gets himself to his feet as Jace throws himself against the smoke to help. 

Izzy makes a dash for her brother, grasping at his hand to pull him out, and though Alec knows he should help, he gets to Clary first. There’s blood running from her temple in a trickle as she stands the last of all of them, unsteady on her feet. “We need to help anyway,” she says as he reaches her, staring at their newfound friends with her green eyes wide. 

As Jace shouts out in pain, or maybe fear, Alec pivots, knocking an arrow to his bow. Before he can shoot it, Clary darts past, seraph blade at the ready, and stabs the smoke right beside Jace’s hip. It disperses with a sound like a shriek and glass shattering, leaving him unconscious on the floor with the girls at his side, and Alec standing with his arrow pointed at Magnus’ head. Slowly, Alec lowers his bow, slipping his arrow back into its quiver, and Magnus smiles like everything went exactly as it should. 

“Is he going to be okay?” Clary asks, attached to Jace already. Izzy says nothing, clinging to his hand. 

“That depends,” Magnus answers, stepping next to Jace’s head. “Does your friend normally lie on the floor like this?”

At that, Jace wakes with a jolt, gasping, eyes roving around the room as he tries to get his bearings. Clary sighs, pushing her fingers through her hair and falling back on her knees, relieved as though they haven’t just lost their best chance to find Mom.

  
  


Half a week later, Alec, his sister, and the Lightwoods still haven’t found another lead. To blow off stir-crazy frustration, he and Clary gather in the training room, where he teaches her archery like he tried to when he was fourteen and she was twelve. “I don’t get how you’re just so good at this,” she says, fumbling with another arrow. They’ve been here two hours, and she’s only marginally better than she was two weeks earlier. “I’m worse than that first guy you dated. Whatever his name was.”

“Chris,” he says, tapping her elbow so she lowers it. “Seriously, Clary, how do you forget Chris?”

She breathes in, exhales, and releases the arrow. It hits the target, but off center, which only makes her huff in irritation. “Who cares?” she says. “I hated him anyway.”

With a single-shoulder shrug, she lowers the bow and reaches for her shoulder, massaging it as she rolls her neck. “I’m so out of shape,” she says, as though she hasn’t spent every morning running since Mom let her around the block alone. “So, have you heard anything from Magnus yet?”

Ever since the failed demon summoning, she’s asked the same thing every day. Before he can answer that no, he hasn’t and no, he doesn’t want to hear anything, Jace calls out, “Hey, guys, meet our mother,” from the steps.

Izzy and Jace run up to them without a sign that anything’s out of the ordinary, but their mother’s frozen on bottom step, face colorless and eyes trained solely on him. It puts him on the defensive immediately, because he knows he and Clary weren’t being quiet, but the moment passes, and she comes up with a brisk walk so unlike either of her son or daughter that it’s jarring. “You must be the Fray children,” she says, walking past Alec to Clary, crowding her, “and you’re Valentine’s daughter.”

There’s something  _ off  _ with the way Mrs. Lightwood says it, like it isn’t recently discovered news when even he and Clary have only known for a few days. “Yeah,” she says, grip tightening around the practice bow. Alec shoots a look at his friends, silently asking for help. “But it’s not like I was raised by him, so why does it matter?”

“Mom,” Jace says, rushing up the stairs to stand beside Clary. Izzy follows, but slower, and uncharacteristically small. “This is  _ Clary.  _ That’s Alec.”

Mrs. Lightwood doesn’t smile, or even try to fake it. Instead, her eyes flick to Alec twice in a quick, fluttering movement that leaves him disquieted, before settling on her son. Izzy doesn’t even come onto her radar. Just for that alone, Alec dislikes her instantly. 

“The two of you,” she says, finally turning to look at Izzy as well. “You know what you need to do. The Fray children can do as they should have done since the beginning, and stay here.”

Though both her children try to argue, it’s clear nothing they say will help. Clary looks ready to protest as well, so Alec says, “Fine. My sister can use the practice anyway.”

Clary catches his eye, understanding as easily as she always has. “Yeah,” she says as Izzy scowls, her moment of petulance hidden by her position behind her mother’s back. “We’ll stay here.”

“Hodge will watch you,” Mrs. Lightwood says, which is what Alec expected, and why he knows they can get out if they need to. Then she turns away, addressing her children like a commander rather than a mother, and going on about a mission with the seelie. 

As they leave, both Izzy and Jace manage to say goodbye, but it’s rushed, and after a moment, Alec and Clary are alone again. “What was her  _ problem? _ ” she says. “How did Izzy and Jace turn out so, I don’t know, normal?”

“They aren’t that normal,” he says. “They’re closer to how we are than any other shadowhunter we’ve met so far.”

“Yeah, I guess,” she says, and turns to the wall, hitting the switch that opens the drawer of weapons. “So, I was thinking. I might have a way to find Mom. You know, that box?”

Before he can answer that yes, he does know, and that really, they should’ve thought of this earlier, Hodge jogs up the steps, his hair still damp from a shower. The moisture on his skin only makes the red circle on his neck seem brighter. “Hey,” he says. “So, it looks like I’m your babysitter for the evening. Sorry.”

Clary takes a staff down from the wall, and says, “It’s not your fault. Can you teach me how to use this?”

When he agrees, Alec turns his attention back to the target on the far side on the room, and waits for an opening to run.

  
  


After meeting with Meliorn at Mom’s insistence, Izzy’s upset, and Jace doesn’t know how to comfort her. It’s almost a relief when his phone goes off when they’re halfway to the Institute, flashing Alec’s name, right up until it isn’t. 

“ _ Clary’s gone _ ,” he says, panicked. In the background, Jace hears the rush of traffic and sirens. He puts his phone on speaker to let Izzy into the conversation. They’re in a back alley near Cobble Hill, standing between two residential buildings. Someone’s laundry hangs between two balconies directly above them, flapping in the early September breeze. “ _ Simon’s gone too. _ ”

“Did you guys leave?” he says, which he should have expected, because the Fray siblings don’t know how to stay put. He pictures Clary in the hands of Circle members, on her way to Valentine, and almost shudders. “Seriously? Where are you? Who took her?”

Taking a deep breath, Alec says, “ _ We’re home _ ,” which makes Izzy swear, something she does rarely. “ _ I think they were werewolves _ .”

In a way, werewolves are easier to deal with, but also harder. But they can track Clary at least, he and Izzy together. She snatches the phone away from him, her long nails catching the side of her palm. “We’ll be right there,” she says. “Try to hide if you can.”

After Alec agrees, they hang up. Jace feels like punching a wall, but refrains as Izzy hands back his phone. Her mouth’s set in a line, her hands are balled into fists, and she’s  _ almost  _ shaking. This morning, their mom was even more harsh than usual, and then she had to interrogate the guy she’s in love with. Now there’s this. Jace might like Clary more than he should, but his sister already treats Alec like a kitten that needs protecting. All things considered, Jace doesn’t blame her for looking like this is the worst day ever.

“If they went back home, then they must’ve been looking for something,” Jace says, slipping his phone back into his jacket pocket. Izzy always says he’s going to lose it, as though she doesn’t keep hers in her bra. 

With a sigh, Izzy says, “Yeah,” and gathers her hair up to tie back in a ponytail holder. “I hope whatever it is, it’s worth it.”

They turn around, heading back in the direction they just came from. For the Fray siblings, going out illegally with Jace and Izzy is one thing, but going out alone is asking for trouble. If they keep this up, they’re going to get themselves killed, and maybe even their mundane friend, too.

  
  


When Clary and Alec reached the ruins of their apartment, it was barely past noon. Now the sun’s almost set. Every minute longer that she’s here is more time for Luke’s partner to kill Simon, and less time for her brother to find her.

Alaric sits across from her, looking the same as he always does off duty, dressed in a windbreaker and a pair of jeans. “Just tell us where the Mortal Cup is, Clary,” he says. No one else calls her by her name; it’s all “Fairchild” or “girl” or “daughter of Valentine.” It sounds even worse hearing the nickname her family’s used since she was born here, in a Chinese restaurant decorated with cheap, red paper lanterns filled with werewolves bent on threatening her. “No one needs to get hurt.”

As she looks at him, this man she’s known all her life and never thought about distrusting, she thinks about how ironic it is that she’s an awful liar. Mom, Luke, Alaric—they spent nineteen years keeping the truth from her and Alec. Maybe that’s the way to lie someone: pretend that it’s real, and make it true. With Simon captured and no sign of backup, Clary doesn’t have options. They don’t believe the truth, but that doesn’t mean they won’t believe a lie instead. All she needs is time.

Hopefully, if she has more time, Alec will find her. He always does. 

“Let Simon go,” she says, looking at Alaric instead of the stranger. The candlelight flickers off his face, the shadows aging him. “I won’t tell you anything if he’s still here.”

She and Alec used to play make-believe games when they were little based around the books he’d borrow from the local library. Even if she never expected to be in this situation in real life, she’s been in them before. Unfortunately, last time she was five, and the threat was that Alec, who was only eight, wouldn’t give her any more Swedish Fish unless she told him where she hid the M&Ms. Her attempt to tell him they were under his pillow didn’t work, but it didn’t matter anyway, because Mom came home, fired the babysitter for lack of supervision, and wouldn’t let either of them have candy. This is a little more serious than M&Ms, or Swedish Fish, or trying to pretend Simon  _ didn’t  _ spend hide and go seek under Mom’s coat pile in the bedroom closet. 

The stranger, who she thinks is Alaric’s boss, protests, and says, “He’s our insurance, not your bargaining chip.”

“Really?” Clary says, leaning forward. Her heart’s pounding, and her head spinning, but she’s killed Circle members and demons and downworlders all in the course of a few weeks. Lately, she hasn’t had the time to be scared. “Because last I checked,  _ I’m  _ the one with the information. You’re not getting a word out of me until he’s out of here and safe, because I don’t trust that you won’t just kill him the moment I tell you.”

He growls low in his throat. “So we’re supposed to trust you?”

“Yeah. Exactly.”

Before he can argue, Alaric says, “She means it. She won’t say anything with him here, but she’ll talk. And who’s he going to, the police? He’s a mundane, he can’t go the Institute—and that’s on the other side of Brooklyn anyway.”

Though that isn’t terribly inspiring, she knows Alec would never go back until he found her, and Jace and Izzy are likely with him by now. After a long moment, Alaric’s boss agrees, two other werewolves head out back, and return carrying Simon unharmed between them.

“Clary,” her friend says, struggling against their grip as they drag him away. “What are you doing? Hey, let me go.”

“I’ll be fine,” she says, but he’s already out the door, and probably didn’t hear her.

They sit in silence until the werewolves come back empty handed. “He’s gone,” one says, and takes a seat at the table beside the booth Clary’s in. “We blindfolded him and took him out past the docks. Here’s his phone,” he adds, throwing it on the table. It’s Rebecca’s old one, and the corner of the screen forms a new crack at the impact. 

If they’re out on the water, then Izzy and Jace can’t track her through their parabatai bond, but Simon’s smart. He probably found something to identify where they are, and even without his cell phone, he can dial Alec’s number from memory. Alaric and his boss turn their attention back to Clary, waiting. Even though she’s never been able to convince anyone to believe one of her lies, there’s always a first time for everything. 

“It’s in my apartment,” she says, “in a chest. I heard Mom and Luke talk about it, but I didn’t really get it until now. There’re a couple loose floorboards in my room to the side of my bed. J.C.’s written on the front. It’s really old fashion looking. Wooden.”

The chest is safe in Alec’s backpack, and doesn’t have the Cup anyway. At the boss’ nod, the two werewolves who took Simon out leave again. “You better not be lying, Fairchild,” he says, which isn’t quite a threat, but she hears the unspoken one clearly enough.

Now that Simon’s out, it won’t be long until Alec gets here, and even if he doesn’t, at least her friend is safe. 

  
  


Twelve hours after Clary and Alec break the rules and she’s kidnapped, they end up back in Magnus Bane’s living room with Luke unconscious on the warlock’s couch. “He’s very weak,” Magnus says, leaning over Luke, who lies on his long leather sofa. “I’ll do what I can.”

He works, and Clary and her brother sit on a smaller couch off to the side by the bookshelf, crowded together. Neither Jace nor Izzy are here, both dealing with their parents and drama at the Institute. For as much issue as their friends appear to take with their mom and dad, they clearly don’t doubt them—which is more than Clary or Alec can say, since all they heard was a snatch of conversation at the precinct, and judged Luke immediately without seeking answers. Luke may not have been their father, but he did help raise them. He was better to them than most parents are to their children, with the Lightwoods as the perfect example. Now he might die because he tried to protect them. Clary doesn’t just feel like a terrible person for distrusting him; she feels like a terrible daughter.

As though sensing what she’s thinking, which he probably is, Alec places a hand on her back, rubbing small circles between her shoulderblades. “Luke will be fine,” he says. “He’s survived getting hurt before. Remember the time he got shot by that druggie at Cypress Hills?”

“Yeah,” she says. She was fourteen, so it was only a few years ago, and he was shot while questioning a witness of a murder. Some woman walking home from the CVS down the block from her apartment stabbed through back. “But maybe he just healed that fast because werewolf powers.”

Alec doesn’t say anything, which means he doesn’t have a response. After a moment, he drops his hand. “Well, Magnus is helping,” he says. “He’ll be fine.”

That sounds better. Someone who manages to block an entire world from sight for nine years must be pretty powerful. Clary nods, and sinks further into the couch, pulling her legs to her chest and wrapping her arms around her knees. Hopefully Luke wakes soon, because they need to apologize for running. Then they can wake Mom, and she can explain everything.

“Yeah,” Clary says again, watching Luke’s bandaged chest moving up and down at uneven intervals. “He’ll be just fine.”

  
  


After Luke wakes, they move him to the bedroom, and he tells a story about Mom and a son named Jonathan Christopher. Once he’s done, Alec and Clary leave him alone under the pretense that he needs to rest, but she disappears into a sketchbook, and he lets Magnus make him a drink.

“Not as good as taking you out for cocktails,” Magnus says as Alec takes a bigger sip than necessary, “but it’ll have to do.”

Alec stares at him, incredulous. “I just found out that I’m the replacement kid,” he says, “and you’re seriously trying to flirt with me?” He doesn’t mention that he can’t go out for drinks yet for another few weeks anyway, because his false ID is as bad as his sister’s.

With a wave of his hand, Magnus says, “Don’t be ridiculous. Jocelyn may have a lost her first son, but that doesn’t mean you replaced him. You’re as much hers as Clary is.”

Though Luke said the same thing, Alec’s having trouble believing it. It’s hard finding out he’s adopted at  _ twenty _ , let alone finding out along with everything else. “How do you know?” he asks. “What makes you such an informed opinion? You have to admit it’s a  _ bit  _ suspicious that she just somehow managed to find another shadowhunter. If you know so much, then who the hell am I?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Clary’s hand still, which means she’s listening. He doesn’t care. His whole world— _ their  _ whole world—is breaking apart around him, and she’s the only one now that he knows he’ll always be able to rely on. This must be why Mom raised them to be so close, so that when reality fell to pieces, they’d still be able to trust each other.

Mom loves him as much as she loves Clary. He  _ knows  _ that. But that doesn’t make this any easier. 

“I’ve known Jocelyn for years,” Magnus says, reminding Alec again that despite how young the man looks, he’s still incredibly old. “I’ve known the two of you since you were children. I don’t know who your parents were, Alexander. I doubt Jocelyn did. The Uprising made many orphans left out in the cold. Jocelyn took you in because she’s kind, and you were alone, and deserved better than that.”

According to Luke, Mom adopted Alec when she was still pregnant with Clary, which means he was two. Like most people, he doesn’t have a memory of anything that early. His first memory comes at three, when he was running down the stairs of their first apartment building and tripped on his shoelace, breaking his arm on the bannister. This is fine, because he doesn’t want to remember his first family. What he has is enough, even if he still feels like Magnus and Luke are wrong.

Alec finishes the rest of the drink, and lets Magnus hand him another. “You’re never going to be anyone’s replacement, Alexander,” he says simply, kindly, which makes Alec want to laugh and cry all at once.

Instead of doing either, he downs his new drink so quickly he barely tastes it. “We need to get back to the Institute,” he says, because all he wants to do is go home, but can’t. His home’s gone, Dot’s gone, his college career—the Institute’s one hell of a second best, but for now, it’ll have to make due.

  
  


During the talk with Luke, Clary realized where the Cup was hidden, and though she hadn’t expected it to be easy to get the card from the precinct, she also hadn’t thought Luke would end up in police custody, leaving she and her brother surrounded by downworlders. To make it worse, it’s already night, and neither Izzy or Jace are answering their phone. 

While Alec goes to snag an ID card from the front desk attendant, who may or may not be a downworlder herself, Clary acts as a distraction. “I can’t find my key anywhere,” she tells Luke’s Captain, Susanna Vargas, the one who found her and Alec lurking outside the precinct on the day Mom disappeared. The main room’s air conditioned, and too cold for her thin jacket and thinner t-shirt. “Alec’s in Boston right now for research on, like, some paper about colonial lit, and Mom went with him for a weekend vacation and Simon’s visiting family in Jersey for Yom Kippur and just— _ please _ , you’ve gotta help me.”

Susanna sighs and folds her arms. “I’m sorry, Clary,” she says. “All of Luke’s things have gone to lock up. I can’t let you in. What happened?”

“I was with my boyfriend,” she says, curling her hand around her bag’s strap. One of the fluorescent lights flicker, but no one seems to notice, because electricity here has been acting up for years. “Well, I broke up with my boyfriend. I know I had it when I left his place, and I tried to retrace my steps, but I can’t find them anywhere. Luke has a spare key of my place  _ and  _ Alec’s dorm room.”

It’s not too hard to imagine she’d lose her keys; both she and Alec have done it repeatedly, at least twice as often as he forgets to pay for more minutes on his phone. Though she hasn’t made a big show, she can feel everyone’s attention on her, because she’s Clary Fray, who lost the way into her apartment  _ again _ , and this time can’t find a way back in. The majority of the six officers in the room have known her for years, and though most haven’t said anything yet, they’re probably trying to think of solutions. Susanna certainly is.

Again, she sighs, and says, “What about Dot?”

Clary hadn’t thought about Dot when she started lying. She hasn’t thought about Dot in a while, which might make her a terrible person. “She doesn’t have a key to the main apartment,” she says. “I mean, Simon doesn’t either, but he’s got a ton of my stuff, you know?” Before Susanna can answer, Clary’s phone goes off. It’s her brother saying he found it. “Oh, thank god,” she says, only half faking her relief. “Simon says his mom says to just get the next bus in.”

She turns down Susanna’s offer to walk her to the nearest subway station, and asks for any calls updating her on Luke’s situation. “You know he didn’t do whatever he’s accused of, right?” Clary says as she leaves, because she has to, or it wouldn’t seem right. “I mean, he’s Luke.”

“Yeah, of course,” Susanna says with a tired smile. “Everything will be fine, Clary.”

Lately, everyone’s been telling her that everything’s going to be fine, and then nothing is. Heart racing, she exits the station, refraining from breaking into a run, and finds Jace and Izzy waiting for her brother outside. Izzy hugs her when she reaches them, and apologizes for taking so long. “We just couldn’t leave,” she says as she moves away. She isn’t dressed like Izzy; the pleated, navy dress looks more like business attire than an outfit stolen from a high class boutique in a gentrified part of the Village.  “Our parents really wanted to talk.”

Jace is oddly quiet, looking anywhere but Clary. The streetlamps wash him out, and make his blonde hair pale. Alec stands next to him, slouched with exhaustion bruised under his eyes. After Clary tells her friend that it’s all right, she understands, he pulls the card from his bag. “I thought you should keep it,” he says, “but don’t try to take it out here.”

“There are too many people looking at us,” Jace says as Clary slips the card into the zipped pocket of her messenger bag. “We should move.”

In Clary’s excitement and shock that one of their plans had worked, she hadn’t noticed the number of people staring at them directly. They’re all concealed, which means everyone’s a downworlder, but there are too many to fight. She knows that without having to count, and her brother must too, because he reaches over to grip her by the elbow. His fingers shake; his hold’s unsteady. 

Then Jace says, “Run,” and Alec tugs her after him, as though they’re ten and thirteen, and he’s afraid to lose her in Broadway’s crowd. 

  
  


In a moment of desperation, Jace called for his team to split up. He makes it back to the Institute first, then Izzy, then Alec—by the time Clary comes rushing back, they’ve collectively called her twenty-six times, her brother’s nearly in tears, and the sun’s an hour from rising. 

“Where  _ were  _ you?” Jace says, reaching her first, because he’s in the lower level of the main room while his sister and friend are on the balcony. “Why didn’t you pick up your phone?”

There’s blood in her hairline, bruises on her arm, and a tear in her jeans revealing a scrape, but she’s smiling through a split lip like she’s unharmed. Feeling panicked over someone’s well-being is unfamiliar, because he doesn’t worry about Izzy and finds he doesn’t need to worry about Alec. The last time he felt this adrenaline rush of anxiety was when Max fell while climbing a tree and cracked open his head. But Clary isn’t eight, and she’s fine, relatively unhurt and holding up her darkened phone. Even cut up and under the Institute’s too-bright lighting, she’s still disarmingly beautiful. 

“My phone died,” she says before slipping it on the table, wrapping her arm around his neck, and kissing him solidly on the mouth for every security camera to see. 

He kisses her back unapologetically, and smiles at Izzy’s cheer of pride. 


	2. Chapter 2

The day following the retrieval of the Mortal Cup, Alec sleeps. When he wakes, it’s dinner time. Two hours later, Raphael the Vampire arrives outside the Institute’s back door with Simon dead in his arms. 

“Stake him or let me turn him,” Raphael says as Clary stands shock still, eyes dry, while Alec’s the one forcing himself not to cry. “It’s up to you.”

Now Simon lies on a table in the dark basement, chest unmoving and pale from blood loss with puncture wounds on his neck. Alec watches his little sister circle the cold, metal table holding her dead best friend in awkward, jerking movements like a fluttering oriole, and realizes abruptly that he turns twenty-one tomorrow. Even though everything’s going to hell and people are dying, Alec’s still turning twenty-one. This time tomorrow, he can drink Magnus’ cocktails legally. Even if Alec still can’t rent a car, he can drink away this horrible reality for a few hours at a bar filled with people who don’t know nightmares are real and one of them drained an eighteen-year-old accounting student dry.

There’s a noise like television’s static overtaking his thoughts. “Just let him get turned,” he says, the words tumbling out before he can stop them so Clary stops mid-flurrying step. “Fucking hell, Clary, you can’t really be thinking of killing him.”

She places her hand on the table, a hair away from Simon’s arm but not making skin to skin contact. By now, they can kill a downworlder without a second thought, but Alec understands there’s still a taboo here for touching a corpse. When he looks up, she says, “You’ve seen how they live, Alec. He’d never see his mom or his sister or anyone. He’d be alive but his life would be over. Do you really think he’d just forgive me for that?”

“The kid’s in love with you,” he says, because he can’t tell her that tomorrow is his birthday, and he can’t have Simon die on the day he turns twenty-one. It’s bad enough that Clary’s eighteenth birthday resulted in Mom disappearing and their lives going to hell. If anything else goes wrong, Alec might have to claim they’re cursed. “It sucks for him that you don’t love him back, but he really doesn’t care—he’ll forgive anything that lets him be with you.”

For a long moment, she’s silent. Then she clenches her hand into a fist and backs away. “He’s my best friend,” she says, looking from Simon to Alec with her green eyes wide, “and I got him killed. He wouldn’t even be in this situation if it weren’t for me.”

Alec swallows hard. “It’s not your fault,” he says. “It’s Camille’s for biting him, or Valentine’s for dragging us in first, but not yours. Clary, even if he’s mad, he’s always going to forgive you.”

Maybe there’s something fucked up about that, but it’s true, and she knows it. Again, she looks from Simon to Alec, and this time she nods. “You’re right,” she says, and repeats, “He’s my best friend.” She says, “I can’t have him killed. I can’t kill him.”

In three steps, he’s around his table and over to his little sister, who he wraps his arms around before she can run off to find Raphael. She barely goes past his shoulder, her orange hair tickling at his neck, and the shirt Izzy got for her from some store on the West Side is soft beneath his hands. Simon will forgive her, he thinks, and squeezes her tight to him. Simon will forgive her, and everything will be fine. Everything will be fine, so happy birthday to me.

  
  


On the night Alec turns twenty-one, and Simon wakes up dead forever, the sky is clear and the air still and humid. None of the trees in the graveyard so much as quiver, and by the time Simon is out of the dirt, gulping down human blood by the mouthful, Alec and Clary have given up on their jackets, their runes on display for anyone to see. 

Once Simon’s eaten, or drank, or whatever the verb for this is meant to be, he orients himself quicker than expected. “I’m a vampire?” he says, trying to stand only to tip over. “Why am I a—”

Clary steps forward once, and stops. “Simon,” she says, “what do you remember?”

“Camille,” he says as Raphael grabs him by the arm and yanks him up. “Hey, what’re you doing?”

As Raphael says, “Helping you,” Alec hears a whisper in the grass behind him and turns, bow already drawn with an arrow knocked. 

It’s Camille, standing there in a dress of velvet and lace with her mouth twisted to reveal her teeth, fangs on display. “Raphael,” she says, ignoring Alec and Clary, who moves to angle herself in front of Simon, seraph blade drawn, “what do you think you’re doing? Let my little caramel go.”

“No,” Raphael says. From the shadows, new vampires appear, surrounding them, staring at Camille. Waiting for orders, or waiting to kill her. It’s hard to tell when it comes to them, which makes Alec wary, because he knows he and his sister can’t fight them all. “You kidnapped a human, Camille. You turned him. A friend of the shadowhunters. You broke the Accords. You’re done.”

But Camille didn’t turn Simon—she bit him, she killed him, but she didn’t turn him. That was Raphael with Clary and Alec’s permission. Even as Camille protests, the other vampires slink forward, their eyes and fangs catching the moonlight, and he feels a burst of anger that Simon was just used as some Machiavellian excuse for a coup. As the vampires rush forward, Alec grabs his sister by the arm, pulling her closer to avoid any of them knocking into her. Raphael lets go of Simon to join the fray, and he falls back to the ground behind them. 

It’s over in a blink. Camille’s last contribution to the situation is a scream of frustration, not pain.

“I’ll look after him,” Raphael says. Simon looks around, dazed, and tries to get to Clary, who makes no move to go to him, clinging to Alec’s shirt. “He’s going to need someone to teach him control.”

They brought him back, and he won’t even be with them. “Clary, Alec,” he says, voice thin as his eyes settle on them, “what about my mom?”

“We’ll tell her something,” Clary says, but Raphael’s already taking Simon away, dragging him in the direction of the Hotel Dumort, and far, far from them. 

  
  


Clary and Alec are still gone when Lydia arrives and Mom decides Jace is going to marry her. Izzy corners Dad after her brother slips away to his room, face pale, because she’s so angry she barely knows how to react. 

He’s in the library with a glass of wine and tired eyes, watching the Brooklyn scenery from outside the tall windows as day sinks to dusk. The room’s only half lit when she enters, like he was too lazy to turn on the lights. When she steps up to his side, he glances to her, and says, “It’s the best decision for the family. We need the Clave to trust the Lightwood name again, and Jace marrying Lydia Branwell puts our family back in the position of head of the Institute.”

Though Izzy was raised to care about the importance of her family name, she can only make herself worry so much when her brother’s happiness is on the line. “I understand,” she says, trying to keep her temper in check. Mom told her just this morning she’s been too quick to lose it lately. “But you can’t make Jace marry her.”

There’s something wrong, Izzy thinks as her father places his glass down on the sill and turns to look at her. His mouth’s tight, and his shoulders rounded in just enough to be noticeable. “Yes, we can,” he says. “We’re his parents. Or is there any other reason why you’re objecting?”

“Well, yeah,” she says bluntly. “He’s been pretty much in love with Clary since he first saw her, and she’s in love with him. Marrying Lydia will destroy both of them.”

“He’s not going to be in love with Clary Fairchild,” he says, sounding almost like Mom, which sets Izzy on edge. He’s normally the reasonable one. “It’s not going to happen.”

“Clary  _ Fray _ ,” Izzy says, hands balling into fists. “Dad, you can’t stop an emotion. Life doesn’t work that way.”

“Your brother’s a Lightwood,” Dad says, turning back to the window, “and he’ll stop acting like a child, or accept the consequences. And so will you.”

Izzy’s next words get caught in her throat, lodged there in ball of disappointment. Though she’s had Mom tell her to change herself, Dad has always supported her choices—her, and Jace. With a sigh, Dad says, “Isabelle, I’m—”

Shaking her head, she says, “No. Thank you, Dad. Really.”

He says her name again, like it’s an apology, but she isn’t ready to hear it, and backs out. Maybe her parents are right about the Lightwood name, but Izzy doesn’t understand how giving up who they are is supposed to be an advantage. 

  
  


When Clary and Alec return to the Institute, it’s midday, because they stopped at a diner in Manhattan to get Alec a slice of birthday cake and make themselves feel normal. They arrive to find Izzy examining a re-killed corpse while wearing another dress meant for a businesswoman, and Jace engaged to a blonde woman claiming she’s in charge. 

“The Clave doesn’t trust us anymore,” Jace says, sitting on the chair across from Clary’s bed to leave a wide gap between them. She’s never been in a serious relationship before, but she thinks the hollow feeling in her chest must be heartbreak. “The Lightwood family, I mean. Mom and Dad arranged it to get our honor back.”

Her understanding of honor comes from fairy tales and historical fiction novels, and she can’t say she expected this. “Okay,” she answer, because she doesn’t know what else she can say. “I’ll stay out of your way.”

At eighteen, Clary’s been in three relationships, and none of them has exceeded two months, because she broke up with all of them before they could progress. She has a worse track record than Alec, who barely knows how to go on a date. For the first time, she likes someone, and even in the middle of all this mess of Mom disappearing and others she loves dying, and finding out her whole life has been a lie, he even managed to like her back. Kissing him was one bright, brilliant moment before once again everything fell apart, and now there’s this.

Now there’s  _ this.  _

Though she feels like a child thinking it, this really isn’t fair. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, entirely too genuine, which only makes her want to kiss him again. “I didn’t think this was going to happen.”

He stands, blocking the light so it darkens half his face in shadow. For a moment, he hesitates, as though about to add something else, but leaves with a mumbled “see you later.” Clary waits until his footsteps fade, and then reaches for her cell phone where it’s charging on her end table to text her brother, because right now, she doesn’t want to be alone. 

 

Lydia’s been in the Institute a week when she arrests Meliorn. Ten minutes after it happens, Izzy enters the kitchen where Alec, Clary, and Jace are gathered around their dinner of Indian takeout to share the news. 

When she’s done, they’re all silent, everyone looking to Jace, who stares down at the table as though it’s the most interesting thing in the room. After a moment, Clary can’t take the tension anymore, and says, “Well, she’s your fiance. Aren’t you going to talk to her?”

Jace jerks his head, eyes finding Clary’s. “I’ve barely spoken to her,” he says, corner of his mouth tugging down into a scowl. “Do you really think she’ll listen to me if I say she’s got the wrong guy?”

“You spoke to her long enough to find out Mom and Dad were in the Circle,” Izzy says dryly. “You can at least try.”

“No,” Alec says. Clary looks over, and finds her brother focusing on Jace. “Try to find out where they’re taking him and we can get him out. You need to clear your family name, right? Stay on her good side and let the rest of us take care of it.”

Before Jace can answer, Izzy says, “Alec’s right. It’ll be easier if we do it alone. Talking to her won’t help, and it’ll only make her suspicious. They’ll probably take him to the Silent Brothers. He won’t tell them anything during an interrogation because he has nothing to say.”

Clary doesn’t know Meliorn, but she trusts her friend’s judgment, and if Izzy says he’s innocent, then he’s innocent. Jace, clearly thinking something similar, says, “Yeah. They won’t have another choice. It’ll have to be tonight before any of the other seelie can put up a protest about us breaking the Accords. When you’re done, come back here. I don’t need you getting arrested.”

Down the hallway, something clatters and a man shouts in a short burst of pain. Clary looks down at her plate of chicken tikka massala and goes back to eating as Hodge enters with a new bruise on his arm, pretending that nothing is wrong. 

  
  


After Clary and Alec helped Izzy save Meliorn, she returned to the Institute, and he took them into the Seelie Glade to seek out her father. The alternate world is everything he said it would be, and so much worse. 

She has an entire life crammed inside her head so that her real one frays at the seams, and finds herself back at hers and Simon’s favorite food truck where her friends are waiting for her. Maureen sits next to Simon, still watching him with the same lost expression she always has, as Izzy settles onto his lap with a plastic cup of pale, cream-laden ice coffee in her hand. On her shirt is a  _ Star Wars  _ insignia, and she’s wearing glasses with her sleek, dark hair in a simple side braid. Alec, who’s next to her, looks the same as usual with a highlighter in one hand, a pencil tucked behind his ear, and Shakespeare’s  _ A Midsummer’s Night Dream  _ in front of him ready for mark ups. Jace is behind the counter working a part-time job and flirting with Lydia, who’s in jean shorts and a blouse from a boutique shop in Manhattan. They aren’t dating, but he likes her, and liking her is safe, because in this world he’s her brother, but so are Alec and Izzy because Mom and Dad adopted them all after the Lightwoods died in a car crash in northern Virginia nineteen years earlier.

In this reality, Alec’s just started a tentative relationship with a boy from Connecticut from a seminar course on the use of the supernatural in Victorian fiction. Izzy and Simon have been dating since he was a sophomore in high school, and she a junior. Clary has no one, unless kissing Maureen once when drunk on vodka bought at a discount liquor store at the Jersey Shore counts as love.

Jace’s shift ends as Lydia leaves, and he runs over when his replacement comes, carrying an ice coffee like Izzy’s. “Got you your favorite,” he says as he takes a seat between Clary and Maureen, sliding it over. There’s a new coffee stain on his white shirt, which reads  _ Java!  _ across it in pale blue script. “What time are you going to the Institute? Dad said he wanted you there early.”

“Like six-ish,” Clary says with a shrug. “I don’t know. He’ll text me if he wants me any earlier than that.”

“You’ll help me with my makeup, right?” Izzy says, and smiles in relief when Clary tells her she will. 

Alec’s phone dings, altering everyone that he has a new text message. He scrambles to pick it up, knuckles knocking into his cup so it wobbles. “It’s Kyle,” he says, but his brief excitement fades as quickly as it came. Though he’s disappointed, Clary can’t find it in herself to be, because she’s always thought Kyle was annoying and her brother could do better; Izzy, who agrees, nicknamed him Darth Kylo when they first met. “Oh, he can’t come.”

“That sucks,” Jace says, tapping something on his phone. “I asked Lydia to come. She said she would.”

At the sound of Lydia’s name, Clary’s reality slides back into place because the real Jace— _ her  _ Jace—wouldn’t willingly ask Lydia Branwell to a party. Suddenly, the smell of coffee and freshly cut grass is nauseating, and she slips out of her chair, unable to handle the normality of all of this any longer. Meliorn was right, and this is harder than she thought. 

Simon stops mid-sentence to say, “Clary, where are you going?”

“I have something to do,” she says, checking her phone, which is an iPhone5 ten times nicer than any she’s ever had, to make sure she has enough time. It’s only noon. Magnus doesn’t live that far away. “I’ll see you guys at the Institute.”

“Are you okay?” Alec asks, but she waves away his concern, and runs before he or the others can say anything else. 

  
  


That night, a demon corners Clary in the Institute, and it’s Jace who runs down into the basement with his memories intact to help her, not Alec. “He stayed behind to help Meliorn defend against anything else getting through,” Jace says as the demon swings, and Clary goes left while he goes right. Upstairs, this world’s Alec is probably wondering where Mangus went, because he flirted in an attempt to forget that his date blew him off last minute. “It’s better to kill them long distance.”

The demon again moves to claw her, but she ducks, pivots, and kicks, knocking it in the chest so it rocks back towards Jace. “How’d you find us?” she asks as he hits it in the side of head with a broom handle. 

As he breaks the handle over his knee, and Clary improvises with a manual for Espresso machines, he answers, “Lydia arrested Izzy—”

“ _ What? _ ”

Jace stabs the demon in the eye, but it backs away too quickly for the hit to have serious repercussions. “Yeah,” he says. “They don’t even have real proof. But it’s distracting everyone, so I called up your friend, who used his phone to track Alec. Turns out the Seelie Glade gets good cell phone service.”

“She arrested Izzy?” Clary says, too caught on that to think about the oddity of Jace going to Simon for help. “On what charges? What are they going to do to her?”

Suddenly, a stinger lashes out from the demon’s shoulder, too fast for Jace to dodge now that he’s boxed into a corner. He stumbles back when it sinks into his neck, releasing the broom handle so it clatters to the ground; Clary makes a dive for it, wrapping her hands around the middle, and stabs the demon in the chest before it can attack her friend again. 

When it falls back, it doesn’t fade, but remains perfectly visible in all its twisted inhumanity, the broom handle sticking straight from its chest. Magnus runs over from where he was hiding behind crates of wine boxes, eyebrows up and hair messy like he was tugging at it. “We need to get you back to your world,” he says, helping Clary get Jace off the floor as asks for his stele. “Blood travels between realities but objects don’t—runes won’t be enough to heal you, but it will easier there.”

Together, they hobble over the destroyed portal, Jace a deadweight leaning on her shoulders when Magnus lets go to perform the spell. It appears with a familiar  _ whoosh _ , glowing and swirling in different shades of purple and white. Her father’s going to be on the other side, and hopefully her mother. For all Clary knows, they’re still in Brooklyn, or they’re halfway across the world. Maybe she and Jace are even going to die the moment they walk through. But they have to try.

She takes a deep breath, exhales, and steps through the portal into her own reality with Jace at her side. 

  
  


Jace double crosses Lydia Branwell and his parents, telling them over the phone that he’s still searching out Clary even as he looks at her. In the other room, the main one of the Chinese restaurant the werewolves call home, Alec sits across from Luke in one of the booths, and tries not to listen. Unfortunately, with the rune on his arm enhancing his hearing, that’s harder than it should be. 

“We’ll find your mother,” Luke says, even though that was the purpose behind the portal, and all they found was some shadowhunter named Mike Wayland that everyone thought was dead inside. The red light from the lanterns reflects off the side of Luke’s face, distorting his features.  “Now we know his new hide out’s on Long Island. Once Mike wakes up, he can tell us how to get there.”

Though Wayland’s been vague about what he went through, Alec inferred enough to know the man will be terrified of small spaces for the rest of his life. He wants to wake him up, demand directions now, but he deserves sleep on an actual horizontal surface, even if it is only a polyester padded booth bench. They all do. Alec hasn’t slept in twenty-four hours, and neither has Clary. Pretty soon, not even Luke’s coffee will be enough to keep them functional. 

In the other room, Jace sits down on the bench next to Clary, who takes his hand. “I really thought I was going to lose you,” she says.

Alec slumps in his seat, and runs his fingers through his hair. When he arrived at the restaurant after receiving his sister’s text, Jace was half dead on a cot with poison in his blood. Today is only narrowly better than his birthday, Alec thinks, and says, “I know. We’re close. Right?”

As Luke says that they are, Jace tells Clary that she doesn’t have to worry. “One demon’s not enough to kill me,” he says, almost like he’s joking. “You think this is the first time I’ve been poisoned?”

“Oh, right,” she says, “because that’s supposed to make me feel so much better.”

They’re both still bloody, and one of her jacket sleeves is torn at the shoulder seam. At some point during the fight in the Seelie Glade, Alec lost his, and he has a cut on the back of his neck to show where it was torn off. Luke just looks like a normal cop, dressed in a good quality, light blue button down shirt and tan slacks, the type of clothes Alec’s seen him wear his entire life. He could’ve lied to Clary and Alec indefinitely if Magnus’ spell hadn’t had a time limit, and they’d never had known. Mom’s a good liar, but so’s Luke. Maybe that’s a skill shadowhunters are supposed to have that skipped Jace and Izzy—the ability to pretend to be ordinary.

But even when lying, they still manage to be better than the Lightwood parents. At least neither Mom nor Luke are clearly homophobic assholes prideful enough to arrest their own children, or force them into marriage. 

“How do we know Valentine didn’t kill her?” Alec says, letting himself think it seriously for the first time as Jace and Clary inch even closer together in their relief to be alive. 

Luke sighs, and leans forward, elbows on the table and fingers laced together. “Listen, Alec,” he says, “it might be hard to believe now, but Valentine does love your mother. He’d never kill her.”

“So he won’t kill her,” Alec says, “but he’s perfectly willing to kill their children? Great to know I only have to worry about my little sister getting brutally murdered.”

Again, Luke sighs. Alec looks away as Jace suddenly kisses his sister. That’s not the same as murder, but it’ll still break her heart, and he can’t help but find himself angry with his friend for doing that to her. 

Mike Wayland jerks away, eyes wide and white and black and scared, banging his shoulder against the underside of the table. “We need to get out of here,” he says, voice sharp with panic as he forces himself up. “He’s coming. He knows where I am.”

As Luke stands to go over to long lost friend, Jace and Clary appear at the back entrance. “I think we should go,” she says. “He’s probably not coming, but he’s not going to stay in one place forever, right?”

Jace’s phone dings before anyone can answer, followed a moment later by Alec’s but not Clary’s. It’s Izzy in a group message saying she’s getting phone privileges to send one text, and can one of them please get Magnus to be her defense attorney. 

“I’ll do it,” Alec says. By now, he’s realized Magnus will listen to him more than the others. “Go find Valentine.”

Without arguing, Jace says, “Take care of my sister. They’re looking for a scapegoat so they don’t have to admit they’re the ones that screwed up. Like usual.”

Though Alec doesn’t want to go back there alone, he will for Izzy. He nods, and glances from Clary to Jace. “I’ll be careful,” Alec says, and hopes his look conveys that he’s trusting Jace with Clary’s life, too. 

  
  


An hour after Clary and Jace return with the Cup and Jocelyn, Izzy’s charges are officially dropped. She’s putting her clothes back in her empty closet when her brother comes into her room, freshly cleaned and bandaged. 

“I’m sorry I took so long,” he says, wrapping her in a hug so tight it nearly hurts. He’s in a new clothes, the ones he was wearing originally ruined by demon venom, and the fabric of his white shirt is still store bought soft. “I thought we weren’t going to make it in time.”

Izzy never doubted that he would come, because he always does. Even when they were kids, he was the one who was there for her. “I’m all right,” she says, untangling herself from him. It’s early morning, and she has her windows open, the breeze clearing out the stale air that built up from days of no one entering. She was expecting to find her room torn apart for false evidence, but it was untouched. “I’m just—well. I’m going back to being me.”

Because of her mom, she changed her appearance, but it’s exhausting caring that much. The Clave’s going to judge her however they want, which the trial proved easily enough. Jace nods, but the movement seems dazed. “That’s good,” he says. “Mom asking you to dress like a mundane news host was ridiculous.”

Something’s off in the way he says “Mom.” Izzy frowns, and asks, “What’s wrong?” because he just spent a day with Clary, which means anything could have happened. 

Jace sits on the edge of Izzy’s bed, his white shirt starkly bright against the deep red of her comforter, his elbows resting on his knees with his arms loose. “We met Valentine,” he says, eyes darting around, settling everyone but hers. “He, uh. Izzy, he said he’s my father, and Jocelyn’s my—Clary’s my  _ sister. _ ”

For a moment, she doesn’t know what to say, processing slowly and half expecting him to burst out that he’s kidding, that he just wanted to see her reaction. But he doesn’t. She sits next to him, knees suddenly weak, and thoughts spinning. 

“He could be lying,” Izzy says, but Jace just shakes his head. “How do you know?”

“I just do,” he says, like that’s enough, and presses his eyes to his palms, like he’s stopping himself from crying. She understands, because suddenly she wants to, too. 

Izzy doesn’t know what’s worse, finding out that Jace is related to Valentine, or finding out he’s related to Clary. As much as she wants to deny it, because she  _ liked  _ not knowing who his biological parents were and he did as well, she thinks about their father’s reaction to learning about his and Clary’s relationship and knows it’s true. More than that, she knows that their parents know it. 

“It doesn’t mean anything,” she says even though really, it does. “You’re still my brother. You’re still Mom and Dad’s son.”

“Yeah, I am,” Jace says, looking up again. His eyes are rimmed red from pressure. “But I’m also  _ his  _ son and  _ her  _ brother. Izzy, I kissed her. More than once.”

“You didn’t know,” she says, which only makes him shake his head again. Now she understands how Clary felt, and Alec, and thinks it isn’t fair. “Jace, how could you have known?”

With a shrug, he says, “I don’t know, but I should have. I need to talk to Mom and Dad.”

Izzy hasn’t seen them since the trial, and doesn’t want to. She looks out her window towards the Brooklyn skyline, where the sun’s broken the roof the brownstones. “They just wanted to protect you, probably,” she says, because her parents always  _ did  _ like Jace better.

He doesn’t answer, instead following her gaze. Sunshine catches his blue eyes, and his blonde hair, softening his face, as though the pale morning wants nothing more than to highlight how much he doesn’t look like her. 

  
  


It takes a few days before Alec feels brave enough to seek out Mom, who lies suspended and unconscious above a cold marble floor in a bare room on the top level of the Institute. She’s surrounded in a soft green light, which illuminates the otherwise dark room, still dressed in her work clothes from the morning she disappeared with her red hair fanned out around face.

That’s where Clary finds him, standing barefoot in his pajamas beside their unconscious mother in the middle of the night. “You weren’t in your room,” she says, voice low, as she steps up next to him. The green light washes her out so she looks sick. It just makes Mom look dead. “Can’t sleep either?”

“No,” he says, rubbing his eye. “It’s hard to sleep when she’s right here and we still can’t do anything.”

Clary reaches over and takes his hand in hers, which is so cold it raises goosebumps on his skin. Sighing, she says, “We’ll figure something out. Then we can ask her everything.”

Finding out that he was adopted was hard, and that Mom had a son who died, but finding out that that her biological son is  _ alive _ and that he’s  _ Jace  _ is even harder. She gave him up willingly, according to the Lightwoods, after Valentine tried to kill him.  _ Jonathan  _ was older, and Valentine already knew who he was; it was safer to raise him as a shadowhunter, as someone else’s son. At the time, she was pregnant with Clary, so raising her a mundane was the only option. That doesn’t explain where Alec came from, or why Mom took him in.

Now she’s going to have Jace back. Logically, Alec knows that won’t change anything for him, but it feels like it will, because his friend is perfect. 

He squeezes Clary’s hand, small and cold in his. Everywhere in the Institute is cold, even when they first arrived at the end of August. “Magnus called,” he says. “He’s looking into a lead.”

Tiredly, Clary nods, and reaches out as though to touch Mom, but lets her arm drop before her fingers make contact with the light. “Mom loves you, Alec,” she says, which nearly makes him cringe, because he hadn’t meant to be so transparent, “and so do I.”

“I love you too,” he says, and kisses the top of her head. “We should probably get some sleep.”

“Yeah,” Clary says, “we should,” and follows him away from Mom, and out into the deserted hall. 

  
  


By the following morning, Magnus has his lead, and while the Lightwoods prepare for the wedding that won’t happen for another month, Alec and Clary join him. Though Alec tries not the be insulted that the green fire lets Clary through but not him, he is anyway, which only makes Magnus laugh. “Don’t worry, Alexander,” he says after she’s gone, and they’re alone in the wide, empty meadow. “I believe it’s bias.  _ I  _ see that your heart’s in the right place.”

They’re on a low hill of grass and wildflowers showing no sign of charring. Somewhere in the distance, an owl sings with low, throaty hoots, and small forest animals shake the underbrush that pushes against the edge of the large clearing. If Alec weren’t acutely aware that his sister was facing an unknown danger alone, he might think this peaceful. It must be bias, though, because unless cheating off Matt Rutherford’s geometry test in his sophomore year of high school counts as a dark blot on his soul, then there’s very little Alec’s done that Clary hasn’t. 

“The firewall is an extension of Ragnor himself,” Magnus says, as though to clarify, when Alec doesn’t answer. “We had a brief affair once. He’s probably just jealous.”

“Of what?” Alec says, frustrated because now isn’t the time. It never is. “The cocktails you haven’t brought me out for?”

Magnus spins on his heel, smiling brilliantly. It’s hard to remember how old he is when he looks barely older than Alec. “I’ve been waiting for you to give me your availability,” he says. “You haven’t expressed much interest yet.”

After they find the Book of the White, they can wake Mom, and then she’ll see Jace. Regardless of how this goes, Alec’s going to need a drink when this is over. “You can take me out when this over,” he says after a moment. “But no clubs or anything. I’m not into that.”

He half expects Magnus to backpedal right there, but instead he cocks his head to the side in contemplation and says, “How does Molasses Books sound?”

Molasses Books is a shop in Brooklyn with books and coffee and beer. Startled by the perfection of the suggestion, Alec nods, but before he can say anything, the fire returns, shooting up around him and dragging him like a portal into a unfamiliar room. 

“Ragnor always did have a flair for the dramatic,” Magnus says with a sigh, as though he isn’t the one wearing golden eyeshadow and velvet jacket on a  _ stealth  _ mission.

“You’re ridiculous,” Alec says, and thinks even a perfect bookstore date isn’t enough to make this headache of a situation worth it. 

  
  


Ragnor Fell dies, and Magnus sends Clary and Alec back to the Institute without him. Though they weren’t gone for long, disaster’s struck again, and by the time they return, Lydia’s unconscious with Hodge, and the Cup is gone. Izzy sits on one of the library couches, face pale, while Jace paces, restless and ready to snap. 

With a quick glance to Alec, Clary takes a seat next to Izzy, pressed close despite the remaining length of the faux-leather couch as Alec leans against one of the wide oak tables across from them. Jace stays in the middle, scowling and unable to keep still. They’ve barely been in the same room together since Valentine told them truth. Maybe before that, she’d have known what to say to calm him down, but she’s at a loss now. Alec won’t look at Jace, who won’t look at him  _ or  _ her, and Izzy’s been skittish since her arrest, like she’s afraid she’ll be caught again. 

Valentine knew exactly how to break them apart. 

Though Clary’s always found the icebox temperature of the Institute uncomfortable, she’s never found it suffocating before. “We know where the Book of the White is,” she says after a moment, but it feels like a struggle to get out the words. “Once we wake up Mom, she can tell us how to find the Cup.”

“No,” Jace says, stopping and turning to look at her for the first time in days. “You go. But I’m going to find Hodge. For all we know, Magnus won’t be able to do it.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he will,” Alec says, folding his arms. “He’s pretty...magical. But we don’t know long it’ll take to actually find the book, so I’m coming with you.”

As Jace goes to protest, Izzy says, “He’s right. You might need someone who can attack long distance. I’ll go with Clary.”

“Fine,” he says without even asking where the book is. Clary suspects that if he knew, he wouldn’t be so quick to agree to send his sister—sister as in Izzy, who he was raised with, because Clary wouldn’t count as one at all if they hadn’t kissed first—to free Camille, however temporarily. “We should all leave before Mom or Dad try to stop us.”

Izzy stands, smoothing out her dark blue cotton skirt that’s shorter than any she’s worn in a while. Despite everything, at least she looks like herself again. “You’re right,” she says. “I know the two of you just got back, but it’s better to go as soon as we can. The charges have been dropped, but they’re still watching me.”

Ever since they found Mom, Clary hasn’t been sleeping well. That’s all she wants now, sleep, but a change of clothes will do. Maybe a shower. She has four dollars in her pocket, which is enough to buy a pretzel and soda from a vender on the way to Hotel Dumort, since she hasn’t eaten since last night. “Do we have time for personal hygiene?” she asks, and after both Izzy agrees, and Jace looks away, she stands, too, and follows Alec out the door. 

  
  


It’s a little past midnight when Clary finds Camille with Simon’s help as Izzy starts a war upstairs. 

“You’re the one that trapped me in here, little girl,” Camille say, reaching out a cold, pale hand towards Clary’s neck. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t rip out your throat and run.”

The basement’s dark and musty, smelling of freshly turned soil. Clary’s cold, and tired, and worried for Alec, so she doesn’t feel much when she presses the tip of her glowing seraph blade against the dead woman’s chin. “Because I bet we can find it without you,” she says, “so even if it’ll take longer, I can still kill you.”

Six weeks ago, Clary never would have imagined threatening anyone and meaning it, but now Camille steps away slowly, eyes remaining warily on the blade. It’s the brightest light in here, showing every crack in the stone and dirt that makes up the walls of the oversized grave, and she’s afraid of it. “Put that thing away before you hurt someone,” she says, and adds, “ _ shadowhunter _ ,” like an afterthought in the same tone most shadowhunters use when they say  _ downworlders _ . “I’ll show you the way. But only if my little caramel here promises to sign a declaration saying he was willing turned.”

Simon grabs Clary’s arm before she can argue. “It’s fine,” he says. “I’ll do it. Let’s go save Jocelyn, okay?”

After a moment, she lets herself relax. Camille smiles, sharp and slick. “Good boy,” she says, thrilled. 

When this is over, Clary’s returning the woman here, to this room and back into her coffin, and if that doesn’t work, she’ll just have to kill her before she runs. 

  
  


After finding Valentine and realizing Clary and Izzy are in danger, Alec and Jace rejoin the others in a luxury apartment on the upper east side. By the time they reach it, taking two stairs at a time and nearly tripping over their feet in an effort to get to the two story library fast enough, Valentine’s already there. Camille slips out without impediment as they rush in, and find themselves immediately barred by seraph blades held in hands of men with red circles on their neck. 

“My son,” Valentine says when sees them, cutting himself off mid-sentence and spreading his arms wide. There’s something anticlimactic about him up close; he looks like a teacher, dressed in semi-formal clothes meant for a work day, or a real father genuinely pleased to see his children. “I was hoping you would make it in time. Come here.”

One of the men barring Jace grabs him, pulling him forward, while two more step in front of Alec, forcing him against the wall. Clary holds the Book of the White close to her chest, hugging it there tight like the teddy bear Mom burned with the rest of the belongings in her room. “Is this what you what?” she says, looking from the book to Valentine, voice steadier than it would have been a month ago. “You can have it. Just don’t hurt him.”

“Clary,” Alec starts before he can stop himself, because this is their  _ one chance to save Mom _ , but a single swift look from Magnus silences him before he can continue. 

Valentine ignores him, and ignores Izzy when she echoes Clary, stepping forward instead to put on hand on Jace’s shoulder, and the other on hers. “I don’t want to hurt either of you,” he says as they both stiffen. Alec struggles to get past the men surrounding him, but they again force him back, weapons against his neck and chest—loyal followers holding back the brother of their leader’s daughter who doesn’t matter to anyone. Valentine continues, “I also don’t want the book. I  _ want  _ you to wake Jocelyn. We can be a family.”

Though his grip looks to be tight, she twists away and steps back. “I’m Clary Fray,” she says, “not Clarissa Morgenstern, and he’s Jace Lightwood. You don’t have the right to just come back eighteen years later and decide who we are—hey!”

One of them holding onto Izzy moved away to get his arms around Clary from behind instead, and only presses his blade harder to her neck when Alec and Jace call out simultaneously, “Let her go!”

Blood slips from a shallow cut, catching on her collarbone. Light sparks between Magnus’ fingers, and the temperature in the room abruptly rises. Realizing the danger, Valentine says, “Clarissa, believe me when I say I don’t want to hurt you, but Jonathan, you need to come with me if you don’t want you friends to die.”

There’s a moment’s hesitation, and then Jace says he will. Izzy struggles, bashing a woman in the nose in her elbow, while Clary says, “What are you doing?” and Alec says, “Jace, what the fuck?”

“Guys, stop, I’m doing this,” Jace says, turning to look at them. Valentine smiles, and a portal erupts behind him, a swirling purple oval. One by one, his followers release Alec and the others. “Let’s go.”

As Valentine and Jace walk through with a crowd of men, Clary makes a move as if to go after them, and Alec reacts, rushing after her and catching her around the waist just in time. “Let go of me, Alec,” she says, pushing back against him with her small hands, the book on the ground between them. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Izzy fall back against the wall, silent tears sliding down her face as Simon goes to comfort her. Alec just holds his sister as tight as he can even as the portal fades, and keeps her upright as she cries. 

  
  


With the Book of the White, Magnus wakes Mom, who Luke catches before she can hit the ground. They’re in a bedroom, a typically darkly colored one with wide windows to let in the City’s night lights, because Alec said she might be in too bad a condition after sleeping for so long to climb all those stairs. 

She blinks slowly, dazed, but smiles weakly at Luke as he sets her to her feet. Then, as Magnus steps back, her eyes fall on Clary and Alec clutching hands in the corner by Izzy and the standing lamp. “Oh,” she says, smile widening at the sight of them, and for the moment, at least, every bad thing that’s happened, and every jolt of anger Clary’s felt in past six weeks, slips away. Again, Mom says, “Oh,” and then Clary and Alec rush her together, and she takes them in her arms like nothing will ever go wrong again. 

“I’m so sorry,” Mom says, kissing them both on the side of their heads. Her touch is feverishly warm, and her lips chapped, but so familiar it nearly makes Clary cry again. “I should have told you earlier. I’m so sorry.”

There’s a lot they need to talk about—Jace, for one, and who Alec’s parents might be, and why their mother lied even about that, but a talk can wait. For now, Clary wraps her arms around Mom’s middle, overlapping her brother’s, and focuses on the feeling of her family warm and safe and breathing. 

  
  


Alec asked over breakfast in the kitchen, on Jocelyn’s second day awake, who his biological parents are. 

“I don’t know,” she answered, too surprised to tell the truth, because she knows already that the Lightwoods are here, in the Institute, and have been for a while. If she’d seen Jonathan, she wouldn’t have been able to restrain herself. “They were dead. It didn’t seem right to leave a child on his own when I was leaving anyway.”

Without any sign of suspicious, he accepted it, and hugged her. “Thanks, Mom,” he said, “for everything,” and then asked if it was still appropriate to go on a date so soon after everything. Which it is, of course.

She finds Maryse once he’s left to go with Magnus, and Clary’s gone with Izzy and Simon to some vaguely identified location with a box of spraypaints hidden behind her back. The woman’s in her room packing dresses for her return trip to Idris that all look similar to the one she’s wearing: knee-length, sleeveless, and the darkest shade of every color but yellow. Her wardrobe has always been appalling, but at least Jocelyn can blame her choices from their time in Circle on the fact that it was the 80s. 

“We need to talk,” she says, stepping in without knocking or asking permission, and shutting the door behind her. “Now.”

Maryse straightens and turns, her low ponytail sliding off her shoulder to fall flat down her back. “Hello, Jocelyn,” she says, sounding less than thrilled, which is the coolest welcome Jocelyn’s faced so far. “It’s been a while.”

Nineteen years is a little longer then “a while.” When they last saw each other, they were both running; Jocelyn was three miles outside the burning remains of her house, clinging to her small, unconscious son, dying from smoke in his lungs, and happened to cross paths with Maryse and her husband, who were trying to make it back to Idris with two young children to bargain for their lives. Bringing Jonathan to a mundane hospital would take too long, since the nearest was miles away, and they took him. In return, she took Alec—the Lightwoods didn’t know how the Clave would react, and though an infant would have been too hard for Jocelyn to run with, a two-year-old wasn’t impossible. Giving up Jonathan was a risk, but not more than putting him in a place where Valentine could easily find him. 

_ That  _ Maryse Lightwood, who was scared but proud and loved her children so much she was willing to hand them over to Valentine’s wife if it meant potentially saving their lives, would never have been able to look Alexander Fray in the face and act as though she didn’t know him. 

Crossing her arms, Jocelyn asks, “Why didn’t you say anything to Alec? You must have known.”

“He’s not my son,” Maryse says without pause, tension forming around her mouth. “Not anymore. I told you to take care of him, Jocelyn. I expected you to raise him right.”

“You knew I was going to raise them as mundanes,” Jocelyn says, confused, because she did nothing less than exactly as she was asked. “How else—”

Maryse narrows her eyes. “I’m not talking about the school or the lack of training,” she says, and inhales noticeably before continuing, “When I arrived, Isabelle and Jace told me immediately about Clary and Alec Fray, and of course I knew what it meant. I was even excited to finally see him against after all these years. But I finally reach your children, and find them talking about his  _ boyfriend. _ Jocelyn, you know how we feel about that.”

After so many years in the mundane world, Jocelyn forgot how prejudice shadowhunters could be, and the other woman’s words are a harsh reminder as to  _ why  _ she lied to her children their entire lives. Jocelyn uncrosses her arms, resituates her hands on her hips, and glances briefly at the wood slatted floor then back up against as she tries to stay calm. “You’re right,” she says, bunching her hands into the hem of her shirt as she curls in her fingers. “He’s  _ my  _ son, and thank god for that, because I don’t even want to  _ imagine  _ what he would be like if you’d raised—”

“He would have been—”

“I’m not finished,” she says in the same tone she used on her children when they were younger, and Clary convinced her brother to color on the walls of their rented Bayside apartment. She steps forward into Maryse’s personal space, and repeats, “He’s my son. All I did was let him be who he is. If you make  _ my  _ son uncomfortable in anyway, which now  _ includes  _ telling him the truth—you or your husband—you  _ really  _ won’t like the consequences.”

Jocelyn doesn’t know if she would ever be able to follow through with the threat, but she was married to Valentine for long enough that for a while, her reputation became tangled with his. Maryse, convinced, nods once, the movement slight, and says, “I understand. Alexander Fray is  _ yours. _ ”

“Good,” Jocelyn says, and turns to leave.

As she reaches the door, she hears Maryse turn back to sorting her dresses, but stops when the woman says, “Oh, but Jocelyn?” Jocelyn half-turns, hand on the doorframe, to see Maryse shutting the suitcase, not looking at her. “Alexander might be yours,” she says, “but just remember that even if he knows now who you are, Jace is, and forever will be, a Lightwood.”

For a moment, Jocelyn says nothing, looking back out into the darkened hallway. She shuts her eyes, opens them again, and finally answers, “Enjoy your trip home, Maryse.”

Then she walks away, down the hall and down the stairs to the training area where Luke is waiting for her. 

  
  


A month after losing Jace and the Cup to Valentine, Alec, Clary, and Izzy are chasing leads across the northeast, but have yet to find them. Now it’s the first week of November, and they’re in a nearly deserted town on the Jersey Shore that smells of a freshly burning woodsmoke hearth fire and the clear, clean sea. 

Alec falls back onto the thick woolen blanket laid out in the sand next to his sister, and watches a plane fly by, leaving a line of grey across Orion’s Belt. “Remember that time when you were six,” he says, half listening to Simon chase Izzy across the sand to get his Hawaiian Punch bottle of blood back, both laughing, “and we went all the way down to Cape May only to find out the woman in the B-and-B accidentally booked our room to someone else?”

Though Alec loved Brooklyn, and appreciates that he had the opportunity to grow up in the neighborhood that he did, he always felt he could breathe better during those summer weeks that Luke took them into the seaside or mountainside towns. He doesn’t like that it’s a missing friend—his mother’s other son and sister’s other brother—that’s the cause of coming out here again, but he can feel a loosening of tension in his chest with every intake of fresh air. It’s something to do with space and clarity, like that all the stars are bright and distinguishable or the sea rolls on unobstructed right into the horizon, that makes thoughts seem sharper and impossible tasks possible to complete. The others must feel it, too, because there’s no other reason they all laugh so much more out here than they do in the City. 

Clary curls into herself so her knees dig into his side and her head rests against his shoulder. “Yeah,” she says quietly. “Mom wanted to go back, but Luke convinced her to let us camp out on the beach. Looking back, that was  _ so  _ illegal.”

There’s a noise like a  _ thump _ , and when Alec tears his eyes away from the fading smoke line, he sees Simon rolling off of Izzy, plastic bottle held victoriously in the air. She pulls herself to her feet, dry sand raining from her dark hair into his face and skirt blowing around her thighs. When he sputters, she laughs, and he tells her to listen to her Skywalker heart and not turn to her darkside. 

Surprisingly, Clary flinches. Violently. “Sorry,” she says before he can ask. “Alternate universe bullshit.” They’re quiet for a moment, and then she adds, “Do you think we’ll have Jace back by Christmastime? I bet Mr. and Mrs. Lightwood never let Jace and Izzy go ice skating under the Rockefeller tree.”

“Of course we’ll get him back before then,” Alec says, like it’s obvious, like part of him  _ doesn’t  _ doubt that they’ll ever get Jace back at all. But this is his little sister, worried and scared, which means it’s his job as her older brother to make sure she knows everything will be all right. “Then we’ll find out everything they never did and get them to do it.”

He feels her smile through his sleeve, the half of her mouth against his shoulder curving upward. “Like watching ABC Family’s  _ Harry Potter  _ marathons,” she says, and adds nothing. 

Eventually, her breathing evens out into shallow sleep like she’s just turned six again, when Luke didn’t want them to spent her entire birthday in the car. Simon and Izzy have migrated to the wet sand, where the tide brushes over their ankles as they lean close together, speaking in murmurs about childhood memories of their own. Her dress and jacket are black, blending her into the nighttime sea, and in his light blue tshirt and khaki pants, Simon’s a splash of paleness next to her. Alec gives them another month until they’re dating. The thought makes him wish Magnus was here with them, but he’s back in Brooklyn watching over warlock children and buying cats that Clary insists he’ll name Church and Chairman Meow like she’s some kind of psychic. 

When Alec looks back to the stars, the streak of smoke is gone. Clary sighs in her sleep, Izzy tells Simon she’s tired, and Alec shuts his eyes, listening to the sound of the waves as though it can provide him the answers he needs. 


End file.
